Prosecutors yesterday concluded an investigation into alleged financial irregularities at Chi Jen High School (及人中學) in New Taipei City, indicting 15 school executives on charges of embezzlement, fraud and breach of trust.
New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office investigators said they found evidence that school chairman Sheng Tien-lin (盛天麟) had colluded with the board of directors and other officials to transfer school assets and operating funds of about NT$680 million (US$21.06 million) into their own bank accounts.
Sheng was indicted along with his brother Sheng Ping-lin (盛平麟), a board director, as well as other school officials and secretaries, following a five-month-long investigation.
An official from the Ministry of Education’s K-12 Education Administration was indicted on charges that he colluded with Sheng to cover up the alleged illegal transfer of school funds, which prosecutors said had been going on since 2006.
Prosecutors and law enforcement officers raided the school in February, seizing documents and other items after monitoring the school’s accounts following complaints of financial irregularities by teachers.
Chi Jen was founded and controlled by two business families, that of Sheng and another surnamed Yang (楊).
Teachers accused executives of taking advantage of the families of students paying cash for tuition and school fees in advance.
Investigators said that members of the two families sat on the board of directors, or appointed friends and relatives, to siphon off money paid in cash by students, which should have been deposited into an account for the school’s operating fund.
Sheng and other board members had been “taking money out of the school fund as though it was a private treasury belonging to their own families,” prosecutors said.
Since 2013, Sheng and school executives have contracted a school lunch provider, which produced fake receipts to receive government subsidies, they alleged.
In return, the contractor gave regular kickbacks to Sheng and other officials, the prosecutors said.
Huang Lu-kuang (黃魯光), a Chi Jen teacher who said he was dismissed last year after reporting alleged financial irregularities at the school to authorities, led four other teachers in filing a petition with the Control Yuan regarding the case.
Huang said the Control Yuan should also investigate Ministry of Education officials over accusations they helped cover up the financial irregularities, even for years after reports had been made.
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
A Taiwanese woman on Sunday was injured by a small piece of masonry that fell from the dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican during a visit to the church. The tourist, identified as Hsu Yun-chen (許芸禎), was struck on the forehead while she and her tour group were near Michelangelo’s sculpture Pieta. Hsu was rushed to a hospital, the group’s guide to the church, Fu Jing, said yesterday. Hsu was found not to have serious injuries and was able to continue her tour as scheduled, Fu added. Mathew Lee (李世明), Taiwan’s recently retired ambassador to the Holy See, said he met
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
A BETRAYAL? It is none of the ministry’s business if those entertainers love China, but ‘you cannot agree to wipe out your own country,’ the MAC minister said Taiwanese entertainers in China would have their Taiwanese citizenship revoked if they are holding Chinese citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said. Several Taiwanese entertainers, including Patty Hou (侯佩岑) and Ouyang Nana (歐陽娜娜), earlier this month on their Weibo (微博) accounts shared a picture saying that Taiwan would be “returned” to China, with tags such as “Taiwan, Province of China” or “Adhere to the ‘one China’ principle.” The MAC would investigate whether those Taiwanese entertainers have Chinese IDs and added that it would revoke their Taiwanese citizenship if they did, Chiu told the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister paper
RSS